Psalm 8:3-4 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have ordained;… I. ALL THE DIVINE WORKS EXPRESS THE DIVINE CHARACTER. Long after Niebuhr had ended his eastern travels, when he had become blind and debilitated by old age, he beguiled his weary hours "in recalling the aspect of the oriental heavens. As he lay in his bed, the glittering splendour of the nocturnal Asiatic sky, on which he had so often gazed, or its lofty vault and azure by day, imaged themselves to his mind in the hour of stillness, and ministered to him his sweetest enjoyment." Not the heavens alone, but the whole earth is full of its Maker's glory. He said, "Let the earth bring forth its plants." And it did so. He said this in willing it. His act of choosing is virtually His act of speaking; and as a printed word is a permanent memorial of the speaker's thought, so the plants yielding seed are perennial mementoes of their Author's mind. And God said, "Let the earth bring forth its living creatures." It was so; and these living creatures are the published words of Him who spake, and it was done. There are forces in matter and in mind. These forces are preserved, as they were originated, by the positive act of God. This act is His speech. II. THE METHODS IN WHICH THE DIVINE CHARACTER IS REVEALED BY THE DIVINE OPERATIONS. 1. One of these methods is the use of signs, which are fitted in their very nature to suggest the truth pertaining to God. There is a natural language for expressing spiritual ideas. The proverb is, that actions speak louder than words. The tear makes known what the tongue conceals. The sigh, the groan, the blush, the drooping head expose the secrets which no words can tell. Now, if an elevated gesture of man have a fitness to express a lofty thought, much more has the expanse of the firmament, or some mountain of the Lord, a fitness to suggest an idea of His exaltation. The works of God are adapted to an end; this adaptedness is an effect, and therefore a sign of His skill. His works are fitted to a good end; this fitness is a result, and thus an exponent of His wisdom. His works are so adjusted as to awaken the hope of a reward for well-doing, or the fear of a penalty for ill-doing; this adjustment is an effect, and thus a declaration of His purpose to remunerate the good and to punish the bad. If any object be suited in its structure to impress the mind of man, this very suitableness is an expression of the mind of God. Whoever attends to the teaching of nature listens to the conversation of Him who speaks through all nature. The laws of health are prescriptions from the great Physician. The inward structure of things will sometimes awaken in the most atheistic mind a fear of that mysterious Agent who "maketh darkness His pavilion round about Him," and "gathereth the winds in His fists." Nor is the natural language in which God reveals His attributes limited to external symbols. 2. We feel the internal signs of His character and plans. The approval of a good man's conscience has a meaning higher than that of a mere human phenomenon. It is an expression of the Divine justice. It is a smile of God alluring us to persevere in well-doing. The remorse of conscience is also an alphabetic sign in the book of nature that God is just. Their sensibilities, more than the stars of heaven, declare the glory of God; and their intellect, more than the firmament, showeth His wisdom. 3. Another method in which the works of Jehovah express His character is the use of signs which have a conventional fitness to suggest ideas. He has superadded arbitrary to natural language in the communication of His truth. The rainbow has nothing in its structure adapted to reveal a Divine promise respecting another flood; but the Author of it gave it a meaning, and made it, as it were, an epistle printed on the clouds and recording a Divine purpose. The articulate speech of men also is, not less really than the earth itself, a work of God. He inserted within us the tendency to use arbitrary language. These influences of speech "declare the glory of God." But more than this. He uses our words as His own vocabulary. He employed arbitrary language in conversing with Adam, Abraham, Moses. He adopted Hebrew, Chaldaic, Greek, Aramaean sentences in communicating His truth through prophets and apostles. He now instructs men in the words of His ministers. David exclaims, "0 Lord, our Lord, who hast set Thy glory above the heavens, — out of the mouth of children Thou hast prepared for Thyself a power that shall overcome the enemy"; and if the voice of babes "declare the glory of God," then much more do the lips of His evangelists "show His handy work." III. CONSIDER SOME OF THE REASONS WHY JEHOVAH UNFOLDS HIS CHARACTER IN HIS WORKS. 1. One obvious reason is, that the manifestation of His attributes is inseparable from the exercise of them. If He act at all, He must act out the principles of His being; and to act them out is to make them known. When He governs the world He puts forth His attributes; in putting them forth He exposes, expresses them. He exerts His wisdom in giving to the mind an impulse to infer the nature of the cause from the nature of the effect. In exerting this wisdom He exhibits it; for it is this wisdom, as the cause, to which the mind reasons from itself as the effect. He cannot form an image of Himself without disclosing the original excellence which is imaged forth. How can He let His benevolence have its free scope unless He form sentient beings able to enjoy His benevolence; and how can they fully enjoy it unless they perceive it; and how can they perceive it unless He show it unto them; and how can He show it unto them clearly unless it appear in His deeds? If He exercise His mercy toward men, He must relieve the suffering; if He do give this relief, He must therein manifest the mercy which He feels. It is necessary for Him either to repress His love or to express it. Why should He repress it? Why close the gates through which His benignant favours flow forth as a stream? 2. Another reason why Jehovah makes use of His works as a language revealing His attributes is, that He promotes the welfare of His offspring by the revelation. The Father pleases His children by appearing to them. The disciples were troubled until they heard the cheering voice, "It is I, be not afraid." The Psalmist, in our context, was triumphant when he beheld the sun coming as a bridegroom out of his chamber, and rejoicing as a hero to run a race. Other men are often in solitude; or if in society, they have no friends. But the child of God, wherever he moves, is near to his Maker. Under the venerable oak, or on the skirts of the deep sea, or in the pure air of the mountain top, he talks with the Great Spirit. The laws of his own mind are the words of his Friend whispering within him. In the constitutional workings of the soul God does manifest Himself to it. An author of an effect must be some free will. But many effects without us and within us are not produced by a created free will; then they are produced by the Uncreated. They make known God's laws. They disclose His feelings. The acts of conscience testify of His purposes. The decisions of the reason speak His counsel. The necessary beliefs of men are His teachings. All ethical axioms are His revelation. The moral freedom of men is His express summons to a right preference. Their innocent joys are His words of good cheer. Perhaps it is impossible for any power to impress on the mind any truth, by mere words, so deeply as by acts, which are emphatic words. 3. Another reason why Jehovah reveals His excellence through His works is, that He promotes His own blessedness by the revelation. He might, in merely written syllables, inform us that He is omnipotent; but as a Sovereign He chooses to speak to us by the globes of heaven, which declare Him to be Almighty. He might, in a merely artificial language, indicate His benevolence; but He prefers to address us in our own joys and hopes, which rehearse His loving kindness. But why do we presume that the blessedness of the Most High is promoted by His development of His excellence? So far as we have learned, it is the law of all sentient beings to express themselves. Even the cattle on a thousand hills, the birds of the air, have an irrepressible longing to make known what they feel. It is the law of all mind, above all a pure mind, of course then an infinite mind, to bring itself out to the light. Why then should not the Being of whom we are the image feel an immeasurable bliss in gratifying His desire to manifest, in the view of others, what He enjoys Himself? But He has more than this constitutional tendency to develop His character. This character is a good in itself, and deserves His own as well as our supreme love; delighting in it, He must be happy in the radiating of it upon His offspring. The exercise of His attributes is a source of bliss, and we have seen that He cannot exercise them in their normal way without manifesting them; He must therefore rejoice in their manifestation. He cannot raise men to their destined thrones without illustrating His own mercy in their exaltation: why should He hide that mercy? These things, such things, are not done in a corner. A fountain does not keep itself compressed in a ball of ice. The sun does not bind its rays to and within itself. From within, outward, all affections flow forth. From the recesses of the soul to the well-being of the universe all right affections move forward. The diffusing of its own joy is the law of a loving heart, and only in the diffusing of it is the full development of it, and only in its development is the consummating of its rest. IV. REMARKS WHICH ARE SUGGESTED BY THIS THEME. 1. The reasonableness of Jehovah in His retributive administration. He loves virtue. His constitutional desire is to manifest His love. Why should He restrain this desire? But if He express it His nature prompts Him to express it by act. And the act by which He will make known His love of virtue, — known thoroughly by being felt deeply, — is the exciting of the moral sensibility of virtuous agents in favour of their own rectitude. Their complacency of conscience, and many of its preliminary and consequent joys, will be their reward. The reward is worked out according to the laws of their constitution. But these laws are the work, and therefore the word of God. They express His remunerative justice. He will reveal His loving approval in our moral judgments; these will be the heavens declaring the glory of God. And is it not reasonable that He should honestly express what He inwardly feels? This disposition to express His delight in the pure of heart, and to make them blissful in receiving the expression, is His remunerative justice to them. Equally reasonable is the punitive justice of the Most High. He abhors sin. No finite mind can ever fathom the depth of His displeasure toward one solitary transgression. Shall He conceal His displeasure? His abhorrence of sin is nothing dishonourable, nothing wrong. Why should He hesitate to express it? It is what it ought to be, noble, magnanimous. Why shall He not be honest in revealing it? And if He do reveal it, why shall He not adopt the method which He prefers in His ordinary dispensations; the method which the law of His being has prescribed; the method of action, the emphatic, the Divine speech? The punishment is worked out according to the laws of their constitution. But these laws are the device of God. They express what He feels. The upbraidings of conscience are the declarations of His punitive justice. And is it not a punishment from Jehovah? — what can be a severer recompense than for us, if we are left incorrigible, to have the inward assurance that our Friend, our best Friend, is ever near us, frowning upon us, — our compunction being His frown; — not because He is indifferent to our persons, but because He loves them, and therefore abhors our suicidal crimes, and exposes His abhorrence, not in artificial forms of speech, but in our own reason, in our moral judgment, in all the pains by which He awakens our displacency, and which He appends to it. 2. The consistency of the atonement with other parts of the Divine administration. As the Most High loves to express Himself in the material world, so He loves to express Himself in the phenomena of the mind and heart. As He chooses to disclose His attributes in the punishment of the wicked, when this punishment is needful for the common welfare, so He chooses to dispense with punishment when He can disclose the same attributes, and impress the same truths, and promote the same well-being in some equivalent way. The power of any language to suggest ideas and excite emotions is mysterious. Articulate speech is a wonder. The significance of penal suffering is felt more clearly than it can be described. But the fulness and variety and intensity of meaning and of impression in the atonement are what even the angels desire to look into. 3. A third remark, suggested by our theme, is on the harmony of both the visible and invisible works of God with the feelings of a devout man. He keeps his ear attent to the sounds of the land, air, sea, and therefore they express to him rich truths. Ebal shouts to Gerizim, and Gerizim shouts back to Ebal the words of the Lord. He draws nigh to them who seek Him in His works, and He hides Himself from them who care not to listen for His voice. The longer we listen to a distant sound, so much the more distinctly do we hear it; for the atmosphere becomes wonted to it, and our minds become expert by discipline in detecting the auricular vibrations. So the longer we listen to the voices of nature, they become the more full and rich in their expression of Divine truth. Old age refines the spiritual ear; and as the body decays the soul becomes more and more sensitive to the undulations of the spiritual atmosphere. And as century after century rolls by, the whisperings of the Divine Spirit will be more and more clearly recognised, and that volume of sound which came to the ear of David from the skies by day and by night will be gaining new emphasis and new power, until, at the millennium, the heavens will declare the glory of God, so that all men shall hear, "as it were, the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of many thunderings, saying: Allelujah, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth." 4. The Christian preacher is an interpreter both of nature and of revelation. One spirit reigns in both. The truths of the Bible are illustrated by the phenomena of life, and the phenomena of life are explained by the truths of the Bible. The analogies between the two are needed for comprehending the two. The prophets and apostles vivified their discourses with these analogies. Thus is all nature alive and vocal, when the prophets describe it. More than one folio volume has been filled with comments on the suggestions which have been gathered from the myrtle, cedar, olive, willow, palm, and all trees; from the eagle, dove, sparrow, lion, viper, dragon, leviathan, and all animals; from the silver, pearl, jewel, ruby, and all manner of precious stones; from the wells without water, clouds without rain, floods, winds, flaming fire — all of them ministers of God; from children, fathers, ambassadors, rulers, shepherds, trumpeters, soldiers, captains; things in heaven and on earth and under the earth, all laid under contribution, — the grave itself forced to give up its dead men's bones, to express and to impress some truth which men would overlook if they were not startled into an attentive mood. And since the day when men spake with tongues of fire from the Holy Ghost, the Chrysostoms and the Bernards and the Jeremy Taylors and the Whitefields of the Church have lifted up the clarion of the Gospel, and waked the echoes from the woodland and the mountain, and have made the rocks and the streams resonant with the voice of God. Now, as of old, it is the high office of every minister to gather into his own mind, that he may diffuse through the mind of his people, instructions from the sea and the field, from science and from history, from the arts and the aims of men. He should make all the events of life pay tribute to Him who governs, as He created, the world for the Church. (E. A. Park, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; |
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